The old house at Washford Bridge was the subject of an article by A B Shaw in 1920, published in the Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society, where he gave a detailed description and history of the house built in 1671 for Elizabeth Roades.1A B Shaw, ‘The Old House near Washford Bridge’, Transactions of the Hunter Archaeological Society, 2, 1920-1924, 62-64.
The earliest known image of the old house at Washford Bridge, Attercliffe, is in an engraving by the Sheffield artist & engraver, David Martin2David Martin, Attercliffe Bridge & Winco Bank from the Foundery Road, ½ Mile E. of Sheffield, 1791. David Martin was a Sheffield artist with premises in Norfolk Street. He is not to be confused with the Scottish portrait painter, David Martin [1737-1797]. With his colleague, Joseph Gales, they produced the Directory of Sheffield, 1787. A facsimile copy of 1889 has an introduction by Sidney Oldall Addy, in which he outlines Martin’s career & notes that he published 6 views of Sheffield., published in 1791. It had become a public house as can be seen by the arm of the sign-board projecting from the corner of the building. By 1877 it was known as ‘The Fleur de Lis Inn’ as indicated in the sketch made by Wainman Topham3Wainman Topham was a 19th century Sheffield artist who made numerous local sketches of variable accuracy. Picture Sheffield dates this sketch 1877, whereas A B Shaw, THAS, 2, 64 dates it 1879, and says it appeared in the Sheffield Independent in 1885..
The 1853 OS map shows the house with its gardens to the south of the new Washford Bridge which had been built in 1789. The tiny island in the river Don marks the site of the mid-river pier for the old Washford Bridge, built in 1670, the subject of Martin’s view of 1791. This old bridge survived for a number of years in tandem with the new bridge but had been taken down by 1829. Only ten years or so after Topham’s sketch of 1877, the 1889 OS map shows how the gardens fronting the old house at Washford Bridge had been lost to development, and Don Terrace built alongside the river. In so doing, it appears that the old house had been truncated at its southern end and what had been an internal chimney-breast left to protrude from the gable wall. In addition, the ground level around the house had been substantially raised to window-sill height, requiring a retaining wall to be built in front of the doorway, as shown on the 1889 map, and which can be clearly seen in photographs taken in 1920.4The photographs illustrated are taken from glass negatives in the collection of Sheffield Museums.
The house was built for Elizabeth Roades in 1671: her initials and date were carved within an inverted-heart or spade on the door lintel. She was the youngest daughter of George Barnsley5George Barnsley & Alice Burton were married at Sheffield parish church on 21 November 1596. George Barnsley was baptized in Sheffield on 27 January 1565/66 or 3 February 1571/72. The parish register does not record the father, but he was probably the son of Thomas Barnsley who inherited the Porter or Shepherd Wheel from his father, Roger, in 1566 [See Christine Ball et al [eds.], Water Power on the Sheffield Rivers, 2nd ed., 2006, 123]. George Barnsley may be the man of that name who was Master Cutler in 1629. and his wife, Alice Burton, and had been baptised in Sheffield on 18 June 1605. The Barnsley family ran the cutlery grinding wheels at Shepherd Wheel on the river Porter, which they leased from the Earl of Shrewsbury. At the age of eighteen Elizabeth Barnsley married Richard Roades in Sheffield on 14 April 1624. He was the youngest son of John Roades and his wife, Jane Bullas6John Roades & Jane Bullas were married at Sheffield parish church on 19 June 1593., and had been baptized in Sheffield on 21 June 1601. The Roades family leased the wheels at Royd’s Mill on the river Don, so they shared common business interests with the Barnsleys.
John Roades was a carpenter which, in the late-Elizabethan period, was a broad term which encompassed the skills involved in millwrighting. He owned land adjoining the River Don at Washford Bridge, and held the lease of a corn mill and three cutlery grinding wheels there7Christine Ball et al [eds], Water Power on the Sheffield Rivers, 2nd ed., 2006, 30-31.. He was buried on 10 September 1618, and his will dated 22 July 1617 was proved at York on 15 July 1619. His property at Washford Bridge was bequeathed to his son Richard, who earned his living from managing the works at Royds Mill. When Richard Roades died intestate in 16388Richard Roades’ will was proved at York on 23 November 1638, with administration granted to his principal creditor, Lionel Copley of Rotherham. Copley Hall at Birley Carr may have been associated with him. the land at Washford, together with the lease of the wheels at Royd’s Mill, passed to his widow, Elizabeth. She never remarried but, instead, continued to manage the business until her retirement in 16719In 1650 she had taken a 21 year lease of Royds Mill. When it expired in 1671 she retired, and the works were re-let to William Fenton who was married to her daughter, Ruth Roades. at the age of sixty-six. She died eight years later and was buried on 8 January 1678/79 in Sheffield.
The house which she erected faced West towards the river Don and consisted of three rooms on the ground floor: kitchen, housebody and parlour, with an outshot beneath a cat-slide roof on the East side. The kitchen was sited to the left of the entrance doorway with a cooking hearth against the North gable, as indicated by the chimney shown in the Martin & Topham views. Both artists show a further chimney midway along the roof-ridge: Martin clearly delineates this as being larger than the kitchen chimney, thus indicating that there were back-to-back fireplaces in the housebody and the adjoining parlour. This parlour chimneybreast was left exposed, as revealed by the 1889 OS map, when the parlour was demolished sometime after 1877.
Each of the three ground-floor rooms had a West-facing 3-light mullion window, with the parlour having an additional 3-light window facing South. The three upstairs rooms had the same arrangement of windows, with even a 3-light attic window in the South gable above the parlour chamber. Topham’s sketch indicates that the windows were glazed with diamond quarries, and the raking view of the exterior in the 1920 photograph confirms that the kitchen window had this glazing. It was a modest but comfortable dwelling.
The house followed the local fashion in being built of coursed sandstone rubble with dressed gritstone for quoins, windows, doorway, chimneys & copings on the gables.10A B Shaw, op cit, 62-63, quotes an Estate Rental of 1671-2: ‘For stone got out of Dick Bank for Widow Roades house at Attercliffe 3/-’, and surmises that the dressed stone may have been left over from the building of Washford Bridge in 1670. The ground-floor windows had hood-moulds, as did the lintel to the entrance doorway. Topham’s sketch suggests hood-moulds above the windows on each floor in the South gable. When the parlour bay was demolished – probably to allow vehicular access along the back of the new Don Terrace – it appears that the West wall of the housebody to the right of the entrance doorway was rebuilt in rubble without quoins and the original mullion windows replaced by Yorkshire sliding-sash windows.
When A B Shaw wrote his article in 1920 he was seemingly unaware that the house had been reduced in size and, consequently, mis-identified the housebody of the original dwelling as the parlour, and its kitchen as the housebody11Ibid, 62: ‘The house is a small one – it measures only 35 feet by 20 feet – and in its original state contained simply a living-room or houseplace, a parlour, and two bedrooms above.’. Thus, the decorative plasterwork overmantel, with Elizabeth Roades’ initials and the date 1676 had not been sited in the parlour as Shaw believed, but in the housebody. As the original parlour bay had been demolished it can only be wondered what decorative plasterwork may have graced that particular room.
The decorative plasterwork overmantel
This decorative plasterwork overmantel was positioned in the housebody, an everyday room with no cornice, whereas smart rooms such as parlours always had moulded plasterwork cornices. From photographs taken in 192012Sheffield Museums has a glass lantern slide of this overmantel. A photograph [B24.2/10] Sheffield Libraries Local Studies, available on Picture Sheffield, is taken from a slightly different angle. it is clear that the overmantel had originally been set above a mantel shelf, whose outline is visible above the deep stone lintel spanning the fireplace opening. Later alterations, notably the installation of a smaller fireplace glimpsed in the photographs, obscured these features behind a thin skim of plaster.
The design of the overmantel consists of three panels of ornament set between pilasters in the form of stylized roses with long stems and close-set leaves. This form of pilaster is a common feature of carved woodwork of the 17th century seen throughout the region. A comparable wooden overmantel is that from Mansion House Farm, Lightwood Lane, formerly to be seen at Oakes Park. However, the only other known plasterwork overmantel with these pilasters is at Hallfield House in Bradfield Dale. There, the pilasters have nine leaves each side of the central stem – exactly the same number of leaves as those at Washford Bridge.
The central panel, positioned beneath the plastered bearer beam for the floor above is, as a result, smaller than those on either side. It contains a tablet with a raised border and the initials ER for Elizabeth Roades and, below, the numerals 1676. Dated plasterwork overmantels are rare, although earlier examples survive at Barlborough Old Hall [1633] and Bramley Hall, Marsh Lane [1638].
Fragments of an overmantel, rescued from the demolition rubble at Copley Hall, Birley Carr, in the 1970s, were re-assembled by Sheffield City Museums in the 1980s, but only the number ‘6’ had been recovered.
The design within the two flanking panels at Washford Bridge is of a stylized plant with leaves and fruits – a familiar feature, as at Hallfield House and in the parlour chamber overmantel at Bishops House [c.1632-34]. The four different leaves in the Washford Bridge overmantel are cast from the same moulds as the leaves in the overmantels from Bramley Hall & Copley Hall. In addition, the grapes and the berries with out-turned husks are shared by all three overmantels, indicating a common workshop origin and long continuity of practice.
The Washford Bridge overmantel is the latest dated example known in the region. There is little doubt that by the time Elizabeth Roades commissioned it the design was distinctly old-fashioned. She may well have recalled how local decorative plasterwork with these designs was popular with well-off people in her youth, and determined to have the same when she retired. Seemingly, the plasterer was content to repeat a tried and tested formula, utilizing a limited range of cast ornaments, that had been available to his clients for the best part of forty years. However, the most remarkable feature of the overmantel is the small strip of frieze ornament above the side panels. This shows a repeat cast of an urn and leaves – ornament that had first been used in Devon at Holcombe Court and Moorhayes, Cullompton, in the 1550s. The plasterers brought the mould with them to Derbyshire and re-used it at Haddon Hall in 1564-65.
No other use of this mould is known until its appearance at Copley Hall, Birley Carr. By 1676, when it came to be used at Washford Bridge, the significance of the ornament had been lost and the plasterers fixed it upside down.
David Bostwick
28 January 2025